By Howard
Hughes
(The following review pertains to the UK release of the film on Region B format)
Simple
Acts of Annihilation
Dario Argento is the most famous Italian horror
director to be associated with the ‘giallo’ style murder mystery films that
emerged from Italy during the 1970s and early 1980s. The films were notable for
their point-of-view camerawork, their unsettling atmospherics and
nerve-jangling, claustrophobic scenes of terror. Argento is one of those
directors you either love or hate, and his work has often been accused of being
a case of style over content. His detractors cite his implausible plots, illogical
loopholes, deafening soundtracks, overacting casts and over reliance on
stylistic flourishes that float his slim narratives. His films are just too
contrived and stylised, too gimmicky, to succeed. By contrast, Argento’s fans
love his implausible plots, illogical loopholes, deafening soundtracks,
overacting casts and an over reliance on stylistic flourishes. Argento’s colour
cinematography is exquisite, with visual effects achieved via ingenious angles,
complicated set-ups, wire-guided cameras, vivid lighting, garish colour schemes
and seemingly impossible cinematic arabesques, to present moments of extreme
shock and overtly choreographed violence, often unflinchingly in close-up.
Argento virtually invented ‘gialli’ with his impressive
directorial debut. The murder mystery ‘The Bird With the Crystal Plumage’
(1970) benefited from Vittorio Storaro’s widescreen images in Cromoscope, Ennio
Morricone’s spine-tingling score and a collection of good performances – Tony
Musante and Suzy Kendall as the amateur sleuths, Eva Renzi as the gallery
murder victim, Mario Adorf as a anchorite painter and Enrico Maria Salerno as
the police investigator. Argento continued in a similar vein with ‘The Cat ‘o
Nine Tails’ (1971) and ‘Four Flies on Grey Velvet’ (1971) – the three films
became known as his ‘Animal Trilogy’ and all were scored by Morricone.
Argento’s 1970s psychological thrillers reached their zenith with ‘Deep Red’
(1975), which had David Hemmings’ jazz pianist puzzling his way through a twisted
whodunit. Argento then explored the supernatural with the first of his ‘Three
Mothers’ trilogy, ‘Suspiria’, released in 1977. This gory cataclysm of witchery
and murder remains his biggest success and finest achievement, a tour de gore.
Argento has only grasped at this magnificent malfeasance occasionally since,
which has left his fans expectant and frustrated in equal measure.
‘Tenebrae’ (1982) is one of Argento’s better post-‘Suspiria’
films and certainly holds its own within the ‘giallo’ canon. Written and
directed by Argento, it begins with New York horror fiction writer Peter Neal
(Anthony Franciosa) arriving in Rome on a promotional tour for his new
bestseller, a novel called ‘Tenebrae’ (which is Latin for ‘shadows’ or ‘darkness’).
Pretty soon Neal finds himself embroiled in a murder investigation. Captain
Germani (Giuliano Gemma) is seeking the killer of serial shoplifter Elsa Manni
(Ania Pieroni), who was murdered with a cutthroat razor and is found with pages
from Neal’s novel stuffed in her mouth – a modus operandi deployed in the novel
itself. Asks bemused Neal of the inspector: ‘If someone is killed with a Smith
& Wesson revolver, do you go and interview the president of Smith &
Wesson?’ The killings continue. Tilde (Mirella D’Angelo), a journalist who is critical
of Neal’s ‘sexist bullshit’ horror stories, and her on-off lover Marion
(Mirella Banti) are slain in their apartment block with a razor, again in
imitation of Neal’s horror fiction. Tilde’s criticism of Neal’s books parallels
the charges occasionally levelled at Argento himself, as beautiful victims die
beautiful deaths in the name of Argento’s artful darkness. The prime suspect in
the ‘Tenebrae’ case is Cristiano Berti (John Steiner) a daytime TV book
reviewer for Channel One, who is also Neal’s superfan. When an axe is planted firmly
in Cristiano’s skull, he drops off the ‘wanted’ list. John Saxon played Neal’s
literary agent Bulmer, Daria Nicolodi (from ‘Deep Red’) was Neal’s PA Anne,
film director Enzo G. Castellari’s brother Enio Girolami appeared briefly as a
store detective and Veronica Lario was Neal’s estranged, slightly unbalanced wife
Jane McKarrow. Captain Germani tells Neal that he guessed the killer’s identity
in the novel by page 30, but he’s not so quick on the real case. In the end,
with the police stumped, Neal himself turns detective – as did Musante and
Hemmings – to track down the ‘Peter Neal Tribute Act’ who is leaving a trail of
corpses littering Rome.
Neal’s book is modestly described by an advert in a
Rome bookstore as ‘Il giallo dell’anno, forse del deccennio’ – ‘The giallo of
the year, perhaps the decade’ – and the film isn’t bad either. ‘Tenebrae’ gives
Argento’s fans exactly what they want. With its gratuitous bloodletting and
stylised choreography of murder, this is over-the-top, comic-book Argento, a
partial return to ‘realism’ after the phantasms of ‘Suspiria’ and ‘Inferno’. The production’s backroom staff was of an
excellent calibre. Horror directors Lamberto Bava and Mario Soavi were the
film’s assistant directors, and the murders, involving razor, knife and axe,
were staged imaginatively by Giovanni Corridor. ‘Tenebrae’ was photographed by
Luciano Tovoli in Technicolor and 1.85:1 screen ratio (rather than Argento’s
earlier preferred format of 2.25:1 widescreen). Some of the cinematography –
pills resting on a glass tabletop, or water rinsing blood from an open razor
blade – is starling in its clarity. In a terrifying sequence, a woman Maria
(Lara Wendel) is chased through a park by a guard dog and inadvertently bumbles
into the killer’s basement lair. Before Tilde and Marion are murdered,
Argento’s camera glides up the outside of their apartment building, peeping
through windows, then sweeps up over the slate roof and swoops down to the
block’s stair landing, in an intricate camera take that seems inspired by
Sergio Leone’s gliding Chapman crane shot at Flagstone City railway station in
‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ (1968), a film Argento worked on with Leone
during the treatment stage. Another victim is stabbed in broad daylight in a
busy municipal square and ultra-weird flashbacks from the killer’s traumatic past
depict the murder of a woman (played by transsexual ‘Eva Robins’/Roberto
Coatti) who is wearing a white dress and bright red high heels. The film’s pulsating
synthesizer fugues – the pumping adrenalin of the killer or the fearful,
fleeing victims – were provided by Claudio Simonetti, Massimo Morante and Fabio
Pignatelli, who as members of the band Goblin had such success with the
soundtracks for ‘Deep Red’ and ‘Suspiria’. The film’s murders are graphically
staged with zeal – the movie ran into trouble on its first release, being
prosecuted as a ‘Video Nasty’ in the UK and appearing in the US in truncated
form as ‘Unsane’, shorn of 10 minutes. The killings are very gory – seemingly
even more so in this pristine blu-ray edition – and the house of horrors
bloodbath that climaxes the film offers plenty of the red stuff and some good
shocks.
Arrow Film’s new steelbook edition of ‘Tenebrae’ is
the most comprehensive and impressive edition yet released. There are various
prints of the film out there on DVD. One has the onscreen title as TENEBRAE and
the credits and the ‘Tenebrae’ page extracts in English. Arrow’s print (running
time: 1:40:53) has the onscreen title TENEBRE and the credits and pages in
Italian text. I’ve never been mad about ‘Tenebrae’, but this Blu-ray release
has made me re-evaluate the film as one of Argento’s superior gialli –
certainly in visual terms. The colours are bold and tremendous, the cinematography
in moments as delicious as anything in ‘Suspiria’ or ‘Inferno’. Those red heels
have never looked so, erm, red. The feature itself is blu-ray Region B and DVD
Region 2, and as well as the English language dub it is available to play with Italian
audio and English subtitles. It was shot in English and Franciosa, Saxon,
Steiner and Gemma voiced themselves in the English version. A wealth of extras
include a collectors’ booklet with writing from Alan Jones and Peter
Strickland, and an interview with cinematographer Luciano Tovoli. Copious disk
extras include two audio commentaries (one by Alan Jones and Kim Newman,
another by Thomas Rostock), interviews with co-star Daria Nicolodi, composer
Claudio Simonetti, and author Maitland McDonagh (‘Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds:
The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento’). There’s also 16 minutes of Simonetti’s band
Goblin performing tracks from ‘Tenebrae’ and ‘Phenomena’ in person at a gig at
Glasgow Arches. All in, this is a definitive release of what is a strong contender
for Argento’s finest 1980s movie.
The steelbook edition of ‘Tenebrae’ is available
now from Arrow Films.
Click here to order: http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/tenebrae-steelbook/
Howard Hughes is the author of ‘Cinema Italiano:
The Complete Guide from Classics to Cult’.